


Selkies Don't Wear Bathing Suits

by ceilingfan5



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, Lesbians, Magic, Magical Creatures, Selkies, Witches, gay summer love, i know no one cares about original stuff but i wanted to share some lesbians with the world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-28
Updated: 2016-10-28
Packaged: 2018-08-27 15:01:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8406211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceilingfan5/pseuds/ceilingfan5
Summary: A gay perfectionist witch meets her selkie summer love.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A creative writing piece I wrote for class using my girlfriend's perfect oc. Comments are much appreciated! I'll link to pictures of both characters on my blog if you're interested.

Anna was starting to get nervous. She had never left an assignment go undone for so long before, and the blank document was starting to make her nauseous. Every time she blinked she saw the assignment, the word count flashing in red like an alarm on a sinking submarine. She absolutely could not start out her college experience with a late assignment, or, worse than death, a complete failure. 

Not that anyone in her life seemed to recognize the severity of the situation. For one thing, no one she knew had respected her choice of school whatsoever. Her high school had incorrectly labeled the prestigious and renowned St. Michael’s School of Witchcraft as, at best, a technical school not deserving of her wit, experience, or GPA, and at worst, a complete scam for satanists. Even her own father was disapproving, though her paternal grandmother still practiced magic in her retirement, and he expressed the kind of disappointment that still rang in her ears when she lay in bed at night. Her older sisters had gone to medical and law school respectively, and why couldn’t she choose a more useful career over such silly things? Nevermind her argument that proper magic was just as scientific as her mother’s engineering job and certainly more evidence based than law of all things, but everyone she talked to save her grandma had acted as if she were flushing her potential down the toilet to wear a stupid hat and do magic tricks in the subway. 

All of the freshmen had to take a rigorous course of generals, starting with Concept of Magic, which had sent her the assignment that was currently ruining her life. All of her other classes had had reasonable summer homework she’d finished almost immediately, like reading, or nothing at all, but her CM professor had decided to shakes things up and require a reflection project with the godawful subject of “Something Magical I Experienced This Summer”. It was disgusting. Asinine. Middle school assignments had been more interesting and useful! What exactly was she supposed to reflect on when she hadn’t properly learned any formal magic yet? And what was she supposed to do about the fact that her town was one of the least magical places in the lower 48? She couldn’t just fail because no one around her knew anything about magic, or, more accurately, avoided it at all costs. The general idea in her school district was much akin to their equally rigorous abstinence-only policy: silence. 

She tried to book tickets to an exhibition, but nothing professional was happening over the summer for at least one hundred miles, and her parents were uncomfortable enough with how far she would have to travel in August. She tried to interview the witch that lived in the old folk’s home, but got turned away by the nursing staff. She even tried to run a magical experiment on the ducks at the local pond, and nearly got herself arrested when one ate more than its fair share of doctored lettuce and grew to the size of a small pony, startling a playground full of nearby toddlers and babysitters.

It was extremely embarrassing. 

Even more embarrassing was the fallout. Her father had lectured her for a whole afternoon, taken a break to DVR the golf game he’d been watching, then begun lecturing her again. Her mother had stood by and shaken her head solemnly, so disappointed in her youngest daughter’s inappropriate actions in public. Didn’t she know what that sort of thing looked like? Couldn’t she just stop being magical and be normal like her sisters? Couldn’t she take a break from being like that for once and try being a good, normal student who didn’t experiment on local wildlife? Didn’t she know she was tearing their family apart?

But her ancient savior came through for her. When her father emailed her grandma that night to let her know that Anna was grounded and not going to spend the next weekend in Florida, a vacation she’d been planning all year, the phone immediately rang and it was his turn to be lectured. If they didn’t know how to handle their daughter, why not let a professional take her in? What Anna really needed was more structured exposure, not less! And it was no skin off her back to take the girl off their hands and let them practice empty-nesting. She was almost an adult, wasn’t she? Anna could still, after all, she heard her remind him from her secret spying place on the stairs, be grounded in Florida. 

And that was that. Her parents almost seemed relieved to be rid of her, but she put that thought out of her mind and set to packing for a whole month. The whiplash of the afternoon had set her ears ringing, but she found herself giggling as she packed her swimsuit and checked her potion ingredients against her airline’s no-fly list. Anything she didn’t have her grandma certainly would, but she took pride in having her own materials, bought strenuously over the course of months of very secret online shopping. 

The oppressive humidity of the Florida summer was no match for her high spirits. Finally she could be herself, could practice her true calling in life and grow from it, could enjoy her summer for once, and, perhaps most importantly, finish her essay. 

But even as she spent time in her grandmother’s house (in addition to antiquing with her, exploring the local beaches, and picking wildflowers for dubiously useful purposes), her assignment continued to resist starting itself. She’d valiantly attack it and get two, maybe three passionate paragraphs in, before fizzling out, losing her train of thought, or working herself into knots about the morality of the situation. Wasn’t using your grandmother for your homework sort of...cheating? The vague assignment prompt left her nothing to assuage her fears, and the nerves twisted day after day in her stomach until she’d deleted every single draft she’d started from existence. Would the over-achievers she’d fought tooth-and-nail for the valedictorian position be leeching off of their grandparents this summer? No! They’d be schmoozing senators and networking and building real world experience! Could it really count? Even if it wasn’t cheating, wasn’t it at least cutting corners? 

One disgustingly hot afternoon, she gave up the fight, shoved her laptop under her guest bed, and took off for the beach to clear her head. Nothing felt safer than the weedy white sand of the beach by her grandmother’s house. She’d been coming there every summer since she was little, and the memories of climbing the black rocks and poking slimy things in tide pools made up for the difficult terrain and the large number of flip flops she’d managed to lose there. It wasn’t pretty or prime real estate, but in a weird way it was a home away from home, and something felt right about it. Magic was always strongest in the little things. 

Restless, she ignored the temptation of the water to continue her storming about. Her life was so difficult, and she had a feeling she was partially responsible for making it that way. But she wasn’t about to color her whole magic career with a half-assed paper about her grandma. She adored her, but she would bet real money on half of the freshman class writing about the same thing. Everybody had a witchy aunt or grandmother or cousin, even if the family was hush-hush about it. Blood meant nothing to proper magic; it was all about intent. Somebody’s somewhat relevant relative did not a good essay make, and she wasn’t about to cut herself short when she knew there ought to be something better out there for her to discover. Irritable, she hiked over rocks and through brush and ignored what she hoped wasn’t geese poop, exploring further than she’d ever gone before as she chased argument after argument in her own head. Surely she was capable of making a smart essay out of just about anything, but even a decent essay was only as good as its subject, and uniqueness went a long way in first impressions, after all, and before she knew what she’d gotten herself into, she found herself completely lost in what she’d presumed familiar territory. 

“You aren’t from around here, are you?”

Startled, Anna rounded on the speaker to give them a piece of her mind and found herself face-to face with one of the most beautiful women she had ever seen. Her heart, already committed to jumping out of her chest, launched itself halfway between her throat and her ribcage and throbbed insistently, and she fought to keep her instant attraction from showing too obviously and giving her away as another smitten teenager. Her face burned and she snapped her mouth shut before she could embarrass herself with stuttering or gushing or unnecessary fury that this woman probably didn’t deserve. 

Popping out of the surf like a waterlogged prairie dog were the round head and spotted shoulders of a woman Anna assumed was her own age. Her hair was long and dark with water, curling enticingly around her warm cheeks and framing the mischievous look in her sparkling eyes.

And she was entirely naked. 

Anna balked for the second time in as many minutes and felt her face threatening spontaneous combustion. The woman’s hair covered most of what the deep water didn’t, but it was clear she had nothing resembling Anna’s well-developed sense of modesty. Anna averted her gaze and tried not to choke on her own heartbeat, hoping she hadn’t been staring too plainly.

“You’re- you’re not wearing anything-” she stammered, cringing as she pointed out the obvious.

The woman tipped back her head and let out a bark of laughter like Anna’s embarrassment was the best joke she’d seen all day. 

“I took my skin off to talk to you. I figured you might be worth a laugh.”

Anna’s ears burned, but she ignored her shame to focus on that loaded phrase. 

“Wait, your skin? But you-” It was hard to imagine this woman stripped to the muscle in more than one way. Her pale flesh was, as far as Anna could tell, completely unbroken. 

The woman laughed again, pulling her curls back from her face and giving Anna an eyeful.

“You didn’t think I was a human, did you? Gross.” She gave Anna a dramatic wink and splashed her. “I can’t harass tourists with my seal skin on.”

Anna gasped. 

“You’re a selkie!”

“Well, obviously.” She rolled her eyes, offended at even temporary mistaken identity. “And you are?”

“A witch!” Anna declared, puffing her chest out. Something new flickered in the selkie’s eyes, something beyond mild amusement at the expense of another. 

“Now that’s interesting.”

Her name was Mallaidh, the star of the sea, and she took pity on Anna’s human accent and graciously allowed her to shorten it, but Anna was adamant about getting it perfect. Mallaidh was beautiful and soft and round and more than anything, she was magical. This was finally the break Anna had waiting for all summer, and it came wearing a dangerous smile and constellations of freckles that made Anna’s heart sing. She was skeptical of Anna’s presence at first, forcing her to leave when she got bored of answering questions or bring her some exciting gift--a shell bracelet, a keychain shaped like a weiner dog, a strawberry donut--from the little tourist town. When Anna bought her an outfit to wear, she laughed until she cried, but the next time Anna visited, Mallaidh was finally clothed enough to look in the eye. She also refused to leave the water even though she could, claiming that she didn’t usually bother with humans. 

“They’re dirty and all they do is waste and bicker.” Anna wasn’t so bad, after all, unlike the “ocean poisoning masses” with their tendencies to seek out everything magical and destroy or dissect it until all of the magic was sucked out like so many oysters. “At least witches understand that you can’t just go around spoiling secrets,” she confided, and Anna felt the weight of her journals full of notes on her shoulders when she swallowed and nodded. 

Her vacation went by in the blink of an eye, and the more distracted she became with daily visits to the beach, the closer her deadline loomed. But her days with Mallaidh overshadowed everything. She forgot to email her parents, left her blog unupdated, and spent every moment she could fishing, swimming, dancing, exploring, and opening her eyes to some of the last wild magic untouched by outsiders in Florida. 

For her last day before her flight home, her grandma, always happy to support anything that “challenged that one-track mind of hers”, showed Anna how to whip up a potion in the kitchen to help her breathe underwater. It was a thrilling experience with practical magic, and the finished product allotted her almost one hour under the sea. It tasted like strawberries and possibility, and Mallaidh wasted no time in taking her on a grand adventure to her favorite, most secret place in the world. 

The underwater cave was nothing to write home about on the outside, but the inside dazzled Anna silent. The whole thing was a spectacular geode, a dragon’s egg that had hatched fire and gone unnoticed for centuries, art that had remained art while unrecognized. Her travel-sized waterproof flashlight did very little to illuminate the cathedral-sized bubble, but it was enough to set off the kind of glitter she’d see for weeks whenever she closed her eyes at night. She turned to Mallaidh, delighted and amazed and head over heels, and was startled one last time. Her lips were as soft and magical as the rest of her, and even with the potion protecting Anna’s surface-dwelling lungs, the sweet kiss completely took her breath away. 

Mallaidh pulled back after the briefest eternity and glared, challenging Anna to stop gaping like a carp and look her in the eye. 

“You can come back and visit me next summer, if you want,” she spat out, her tone at odds with the softness of her delicate promise. “But you can’t tell anyone.”

Anna nodded, dizzy, understanding the tingling in her face more than the weight of the future. This was over and it had just begun. It was so small, so temporary, but her world felt tilted on its axis, an alternate reality set starkly against the timeline she’d been outlining since sixth grade. She never could have planned for this. 

“I know.”

Her head swam on the way to the airport, her departure more sudden and jarring than it had ever felt before. Her grandma’s perfume lingered, but the smell of saltwater seemed to have soaked even deeper into her skin, and she felt itchier the more the shore receded from view. Her flight was long and quiet, the late sort where no one bothered to attempt socializing, and as the lights were turned off, she opened her laptop and faced what she’d been dreading. 

The blank page flickered, taunting her to choose. Fail, or betray?

**Author's Note:**

> I'm trying to get back into writing more often! Feel free to send me requests at my fic blog, fan5fics, or talk to me on my personal, ceilingfan5.


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